On Sun, Jan 3, 2016 at 7:51 PM, Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
wrote:

> IOW you can't expect Emacs's notion of "symbol"
> to cover all the use cases.  More specifically, Emacs's notion of symbol
> can only be used as a stepping stone on which to construct the things
> you need, on a case by case basis.
>

I interpret this as "Emacs supplies only a basic notion of symbol".

Since xref inches closer to understanding the semantics of the user's
programming language it might want to introduce some new abstraction
for a of a qualified name.  These come in two flavors

- object qualified
- namespace or package qualified

Trying to jigger emacs' symbol notion to cover qualified names as provided
in contemporary languages is likely to be a source of  continuing complaints
and frustration.

/john